Research

There’s nothing like a good set of tweezers. Chancellor Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor Justus Ndukaife, with his team, have developed next-generation nanotweezers that let scientists better analyze “extracellular vesicles” in real time and in their native state—no chemical staining or fixation to alter them. A patent application for the technology has been filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; the research was just published in Light: Science and Applications. Read More

Radiation is known to destroy some breast cancer cells, but new research published in Cell Reports shows that it might also make some surrounding tissue more prone to cancerous cell growth. Vanderbilt postdoctoral fellow Kevin Corn conducted much of the study’s work with Assistant Professor Marjan Rafat. “When we think about radiation, we usually focus on tumor cells,” Rafat said. “But the surrounding tissue is also responding, and that can shape what happens after treatment.” By addressing processes in that surrounding tissue, they hope to reduce the chance that breast cancer will recur. Read More

PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” have already been linked to disruptions in thyroid hormones, among other detrimental health effects. A recent paper by first author Heather Hartmann, a Ph.D. student in the lab of Associate Professor Vivian Weiss, dug into thyroid cell behavior under long-term exposure to PFAS. It finds that the chemicals alter cellular function, including signaling pathways that are involved in cancer. “We hope [this] can help people who are already at risk for thyroid cancer … make better-informed choices, as consumers, to limit exposure to these chemicals,” Hartmann said. Read More

How teams are seeded in tournaments can make a big difference in their outcomes. The way the UEFA European Championship and the FIFA World Cup are seeded could use some work, say Owen Professor Michael Lapre and co-author Julia Amato, BA’23, in an article in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. Improving how teams are seeded could make for fairer, more exciting tournaments, Lapre said: “Balanced groups increase the chances that the best teams advance and that more matches truly matter.” Read More

How can democratic societies endure, and even flourish, amid deep disagreement? Get ready for a fascinating and timely episode of the Quantum Potential podcast with political scientist and philosophy professor Dr. Robert Talisse and Provost C. Cybele Raver. Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich On March 27, more than 100 students, faculty and practitioners celebrated the launch of the Vanderbilt Early Childhood Research Collaborative, established at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development. The new initiative will drive innovation and promote the thriving of young children (birth… Read More

By Jenna Somers Most elementary school-aged children have a surprising cognitive ability: they can detect—nearly as well as adults—when someone treats people from one social group differently than another. The study, “Children’s and adults’ detection of social biases,” published in January in Child Development, demonstrates children’s emerging capacity to recognize… Read More

The humanities shape how we understand history, culture and the complex challenges facing society. In March, Vanderbilt advocates Paul Stob, director of the A&S College Core and professor of communication studies, and Ayla Faullin, a Vanderbilt junior studying English, traveled to Washington, D.C., for the National Humanities Alliance’s Humanities Advocacy Day. There, they met with congressional offices to advocate for continued federal support for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Read More

Vanderbilt’s dedicated institutional review board for social, behavioral and educational research soft-launched a year ago. The VU SBER IRB, now fully operational, strengthens Vanderbilt’s support for human-participant research while incorporating feedback from the research community.  Read More

Hussam Mahmoud, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Sustainability, Energy and Climate, has been named a National Geographic Explorer for an innovative study about how to provide a better framework for preparing for wildfires. National Geographic Explorers are groundbreaking scientists, conservationists, educators and storytellers who get funding and support from the National Geographic Society to illuminate and protect the planet. Read More

Extreme heat kills more people in the U.S. each year than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined. It's typically thought of as a climate issue, but a new report from the Vanderbilt Cultural Contexts of Health and Wellbeing Initiative suggests that it's also a social one. The report examines how heat-related illness is often made worse by biological vulnerabilities, cultural norms and political and economic structures. Read More

Everything you touch was developed by basic science, says Ian Macara, chair of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. From food varieties and new crops, to your phone, your computer and the plastics we use every day, everything originally came out of a basic research lab. Macara's department, within the School of Medicine Basic Sciences, aims to train the next generation of scientists to advance basic biomedical research at the cellular, molecular and organismal levels. Read More

For Hannah Richards, chemistry answered questions and opened doors. Read More

Gentle caress, searing burn, jolting shock. All these are possible with the elemental power of touch. Read how Shan Meltzer studies touch from the cellular level through the nervous system to the brain, to find better ways to treat pain and physical injuries. Read More

The results of 2026 Vanderbilt Poll–Nashville reflect, in part, the effects of the ice storm that gripped the region in late January. The storm and its aftermath zapped the level of optimism that city residents have enjoyed for the past decade, and respondents also expressed more concerns about Nashville’s direction and leadership. Approval ratings for the school board, police and fire departments remained relatively stable, but Mayor Freddie O’Connell and Metro Council suffered a notable dip in public support.   Read More

By Jenna Somers  When a young student writes “F-L-O-T-E” for “float,” teachers at the Roberts Academy and Dyslexia Center at Vanderbilt University see the progress and potential behind her thinking. Samantha Gesel “Her incorrect spelling of ‘float’ is brilliant!” says Samantha Gesel, assistant director of the Roberts Academy… Read More

Vanderbilt’s undergraduate, graduate and professional schools are taking on the challenges of an ever-evolving world with dozens of new courses and programs for the 2026–27 school year. Here are some of the new academic ways the university is preparing students to combine knowledge and vision to create future impact. Read More

Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development, long a pioneer in early childhood studies, will launch the Vanderbilt Early Childhood Research Collaborative on March 27, uniting more than 40 faculty members across Vanderbilt University to advance early childhood research and translate findings for families, educators and communities.   The ECRC serves as a hub where… Read More

Vanderbilt researchers are hunting down ways to combat Alzheimer’s by developing compounds that affect the proteins that are linked to it. TAOK-1 is such a protein, but it has not been thoroughly studied because there wasn’t a “tool compound” to study it with. Former postdoctoral fellow Daniel Schultz and Ph.D. student Lauren Parr have developed two such compounds—one that inhibits TAOK-1, and another that activates the entire TAOK protein family—through work conducted in the WCNDD, led by Executive Director Craig Lindsley. Read More

Think of cells as factories that hold sets of machines doing different things. How those machines are organized and used determines the efficiency of the factory. Vanderbilt researchers are looking into how cells reorganize those machines over time—and what that means for aging. They’re focused on a cell structure (machine) called the ER, which is known to be vital to cell processes but has not yet been thoroughly studied. “Changes in the ER occur relatively early in the aging process,” says Assistant Professor Kris Burkewitz. “One of the most exciting implications of this is that it may be one of the triggers for what comes later: dysfunction and disease.” And identifying the trigger could lead to being able to stop the firing. Read More